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Luke Patience: European Champions 5 months after teaming up

In the historical Athens, and the acropolis looking over the city and race courses made for a pretty awesome setting. Steeped in Olympic history, we are very lucky to visit these places.

The conditions we knew Athens would produce made for a long, drawn out and tough regatta. With everyone of the world fleet present, we started the week controlled and with our feet on the ground to do the simple things well, to give ourselves a chance.

Some of the more satisfying victories come in a controlled way where you slowly, but surely, grind away at each of our 11 races over 6 days, and watch as one by one your competitors fall away at your heals. We were very proactive in creating the correct frame of mind each day to allow ourselves to focus on each moment of each race. In hot and light climates, concentration plays a big part. Usually the benefit of this frame of mind comes right at the end of the week when you race unhindered by the relentless fight and want it as much as you did on race 1.

I love the fight! And through our patience, the penultimate day came along and we found our finest form of the week that day. The boat was on fire and everything felt in sync. Elliot and I were as slick as we could hope to be together and the damage we put on the points board was my biggest to date. 30 points clear of next euro boat and European champions with a day to spare came on that day. All controlled, all planned and most importantly – executed.

After 5 months in the boat together this was a massive moment for us. Its actually come at the beginning of an intense period where we have a test event in Rio and our world champs in September. There’s no better way to create honest feedback of how well you’re going than to produce your best performance and find what is helping you and hindering you.

I hope we have given our competitors something to think about, we are just getting started…